Local governance in India’s newly urbanizing places: Contingent mandates and territories in peripheral villages of Chennai
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Situated in the wider context of rapidly urbanizing India, this paper examines the changing conditions of local governance from the vantage point of villages located on the periphery of Chennai. Through the frame of contingency, the paper explores the challenges that urban growth and state rescaling strategies visit on peripheral villages, capturing core aspects of the peripheral condition, including the contingent agency of local governments and the risk of annexation. With its analytical focus on local sources of knowledge—budgets, village council decision-making as well as subjectivities expressed by residents—this study seeks to nuance dominant representations of urban peripheries that emphasize their role in strategies of capital accumulation. The comparative analysis of local finances in selected villages provides a window onto forms of knowledge that shape governance practices and reveals the profoundly uneven effects produced by urban development, notably concerning tax revenues. The findings converge to depict local governance as increasingly complex, multiscalar and contingent; villages continue to enjoy a degree of independence in the running of their everyday affairs, yet find their authority increasingly challenged by the territorial designs of more powerful state and non-state actors.
Source: Journal of Urban Affairs
Author: Loraine Kennedy
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4410977111